Reporter what are you in town for . Richard for the funeral of a classmate, art ryan. Reporter right. We interviewed him, fortunately. And are sorry to hear about his passing, but we are glad to see you in town. Tell me about your childhood, where did you grow up . Richard i was born in 1939. I grew up in the mountains of georgia where tennessee and North Carolina come together. Reporter is that fairly close to chattanooga . Richard it is southwest of chattanooga. Or east. Reporter what did your parents do . Richard my daddy was an engineer. Civil engineer. He built dams. My mother was a schoolteacher. Reporter siblings, did you have any siblings . Richard yes, i have an older brother, two years older, and an older sister, three years older. I was an oops. Reporter tell us what it was like growing up. In a seven acre farm up in the mountains. Rural, very poor. A big bootlegging county. My best friend nearby had a lot more money than we did. I told dad, the wilsons have a lot more money than we do. I said why dont we make more money . He said i would but your mother wont let me. [laughter] when i was in high school i rode the school bus for 25 miles 20 day twice a day. Reporter wow. Richard that mustve taken yeah, it was pretty remote. Reporter that mustve taken nearly an hour to get to school. Richard yep. Reporter was at the same school your mom taught at . Richard no, she taught at the local grammar school. She taught me for the first through third grades. Then i moved on. To the next school. Then she quit teaching. Her health was very poor. When i was born she was told that she would never get out of bed again. The beauty of it is when she died at the age of 92, she was walking half a mile two days a week. Reporter thats wonderful. Ok. And your dad was an engineer . Richard yes, he was from georgia tech. Reporter was there any military tradition in your family . Richard no, not at all. Reporter what were your interests as a young boy . Richard oh, hunt, fish. I took school seriously because i knew it was important. I enjoyed farming. I had a pet cow. Reporter did you have a lot of animals on your farm . Richard we had, i think, a dozen cows and a couple of pigs, and the Chicken House. A big Chicken House, that really helped our income. Reporter sure. Richard chicken eggs. Reporter did you sell the eggs . Richard yes. We had roosters so we sold fertilized eggs which brings a better price than regular eggs. Funny thing, you know, in the Chicken House, you dont want all this but reporter this is interesting, this is American History right here. Richard the Chicken House had nests along the side, they built a little trolley where you put the chicken and basket in and you just get the eggs. Every once in a while you would think what is that . Raise it up. And there would be a little king snake eating the eggs. [laughter] you had to get them out and haul them away so they cant kill the king snake. They are good snakes. Reporter because they eat vermin . Richard yeah, and they will kill other snakes. They will kill a rattlesnake. That was sort of neat. Reporter well. Do you remember the first time you reached in and grabbed a snake . Richard i dont remember the first time. It got to be sort of old hat. Reporter thats nice that you had all sorts of animals on the farm. I imagine that taught you responsibility at a young age. Richard yes. I had to milk a cow every morning before going to school. Reporter what time did you have to leave for school . Richard i dont remember. Reporter you must have had to get up early to milk the cows. Richard yeah, i probably left the house around 7 00. And then walk half a mile to catch the school bus. Reporter wow. Richard that was ok. Reporter did you play any sports . Richard as a senior in high school, the first time our Little High School got football. I played football as a senior. Reporter what position did you play . Richard i was a blocking back. We ran a single wing. It was fun. Reporter how did you hear about west point . Richard i guess i saw it on the long gray line on television. Im pretty sure that was my first introduction. I was impressed. Dad told me and my brother, if either one of us were interested in going to west point he thought he could get us an appointment. My brother was not interested at all. Daddy didnt have enough money to send me to a regular college, so i thought i will go to west point. It will be free. [laughter] reporter ok. Where did your brother and up going . End up going . Richard he flunked out of georgia tech. Then he flew airplanes for delta until he turned 60. During that time he went to Georgia State and got a bachelors in Business Administration or Something Like that. Reporter how about your sister . Richard she got her masters in fine arts from the university of georgia. She loved to do it but never really made didnt really do anything, didnt make any money with it. She got married i think three times. Young boys. Richard reporter you showed up to west point, you must have showed up in 1959. Richard yes, right. Reporter what is your most vivid memory of your first day at the academy . Richard it is all sort of hazy. I was getting screamed at. I wasnt expecting that. But thats what happens, so thats what happened. Reporter how was your summer training . Richard it was very, very good. And very demanding. I was not expecting it either. But i appreciated it. I really did. Reporter what was your favorite part of the training . Not the running. [laughter] i guess the shooting, i grew up hunting. I was a pretty good shot. I enjoyed the rifle and pistol. Reporter did you shoot m14s or m1s . Were m1s. Think they reporter you were shooting world war ii era rifles with the eight round clip. Richard yes. Reporter excellent. Tell me about what it was like once the Academic Year started. Richard it was demanding but it was enjoyable. I went to college for two years before i went to west point. Reporter where did you go . Richard i went to Young Harris College for a year. A little methodist college. And North Georgia College for a year. North Georgia College is a fine college. It really is. I went to young harris because daddy told us kids we can go anywhere he wanted to as long as we went to young harris. [laughter] then i told him i wanted to go to west point, and he said well we better tell better send you to north georgia to get you squared away. Reporter what did north georgia help you with . With respect when you came to west point . Richard all the military discipline. The marching. North georgia is one of the five military colleges. Bmi, citadel. I have forgotten what the other ones were. But it was the only one that was coed. Reporter was it coed back then, too . Richard yes. Reporter how was that . Richard that was good. It was nice to have girls on campus. Anyway, that was good. Reporter you were prepared for the marching and some of the military study. You felt pretty prepared academically . Richard yes, i did. Reporter what were some of your favorite classes . Richard math, chemistry, and mechanics. My worst class was spanish. I have no knack for foreign language. Reporter physically how was it for you . Richard it was fine. I was in good shape. It was fine. Reporter militarily, your summer training how was it what sort of training did you do . Richard count buckner was the best. That was Field Training as well as physical training. I learned a lot at camp buckner. This is what a patrol is. This is how you do stuff. Reporter do you feel that west point prepared you adequately for when you got into the army and went to the basic course, rangers course, things like that . Richard absolutely. Reporter as you went through west point, it became time to choose a branch. What were you interested in and why . Richard armor for the first couple of years. That is the combat arm, looked pretty exciting to me. Then i figured there is no place for armor in vietnam, so im going to go infantry. Reporter was vietnam starting to get ramped up . Richard it was getting started. Yeah. Reporter what were you hearing about vietnam as a cadet . Richard not much other than the communists were invading the place and we were trying to protect them and save them and stuff. We were there for the noble cause. Reporter ok. How was graduation for you . Richard it was wonderful. Reporter were your folks able to come up . Richard my dad was. That was neat. Reporter what did he think about it, when was the first time your dad came up to west point . Richard graduation. Reporter what did he think of the place . Richard he was impressed. He doesnt say a lot about being impressed, but he was. Reporter after graduation, tell me about some of the courses you had before you got out to your unit. Richard basic force, jump school, ranger. I guess that was it. Then i got to the 82nd which was great. Reporter who were you with . 325 alpha company. Reporter you arrived in time for the Dominican Republic. Tell me about that . That is something not a whole lot of folks know about. Richard that was excellent. I had my Second Company commander then. My first one was west point graduate. He moved on. This guy was a north georgia graduate. Atorter had you known him north georgia . Richard yeah, he was class of 1959. Neat, neatguy guy. We got in town, unopposed landing. Went in by airplane, c130s. He told me, ok, take your platoon and go down these two blocks. And set up a blocking position. I said ok. I put half the platoon on the sidewalk and told them to go forward and left, half the platoon on the sidewalk, look forward and right. I will just go down the middle. And i did. First time i got shot at. No damage done. I was surprised at what incoming rifle fire sounded like. Very sharp crack. It was, everybody shot a little bit. Settled down without incident. I went up on the second floor and i hope youre going to edit this stuff. Went into this room of this little hotel, immediately it was obvious that it was a brothel. That is the only time i spent the night in a whore house. [laughter] reporter was it a good Vantage Point . Richard yes, it was. And all the girls were gone. There was nobody there. Yes, it was a good Vantage Point. Reporter what were we doing in the Dominican Republic . Richard somebody was trying to overthrow the government as i understand it. I dont remember the names. Somebody that we thought was communist was trying to turn it into another haiti, and we went down to stop it. And i think we did. Reporter you must have been rigged to jump, or did you know that youre going to do an air landing. Richard we knew that we were going to do an air landing. Reporter aside from the sporadic fire that you took walking down the street, was there any other firing at you . Richard no. Reporter how long were you there . Richard two months. During that time i was able to go to a beautiful beach. I didnt know it had such beautiful beach. But it did. From there i went to vietnam. Reporter what did you do for the two months that you were in the Dominican Republic . Patrols or just security . Richard i guess it was all just security. It was all in town. Reporter did you draw any lessons from your time in the Dominican Republic that helped you in vietnam . Just what incoming rifle fire sounds like. Thats something good to know. Reporter sure. So when you hear it again and it is more powerful, you are not as surprised. Richard right. Reporter so your first time in vietnam was from 1965 to 1967. Who did you serve with . Richard the first year i was with the vietnamese airborne and we were eighth battalion based in saigon and we traveled all over the country except the fourth core. Never met the fourth core. The eighth vietnamese battalion was the finest troops ive ever served with. They really were. In fact, on one particular operation, they got the american president ial unit citation. Reporter wow. What made them the finest troops you ever served with . Richard to give you an example, in this particular operation, our battalion only had about 350 men. We were always a little standby. The whole regiment tried to attack, supported with tanks and armored personnel carriers. Stopped, turned, and ran. Have you ever seen a whole division run . It is just awesome. Our little Battalion Commander said we go, we go. And we did. Went through where those guys had turned and ran, and it was good. The Company Commander was a super guy. He came back to go to the infantry advanced course when my parents lived in georgia. He spent the weekend with them. Reporter nice. Richard they thought he was great, he he thought they were great. Reporter did he get a lot of georgia home cooking . Richard yeah, he really enjoyed that. In this assault, we were really bogged down getting into the village for a few minutes. He pulled out his little derringer pistol and i thought he is going to start shooting his troops. I cant let this happen. So i jumped up and ran over here and said i will go over here on this side and as i was going up a molotov cocktail at the mud and went sideways. It went off. I remember sailing through the air. When i woke up they were next to me. Doing very well. I got up and trotted over to him and he looked up and, oh, i thought you were dead. [laughter] not yet. That was good. Reporter what sort of training did you do with the vietnamese soldiers . Richard actually, i did not do any training with them. I just worked with them on operations. My biggest job was to coordinate air support. We never had artillery. Always out of artillery range. Reporter ok. How responsive was the air support . Richard very, very, very good. It was excellent. Reporter what would you usually call for . Did you call for a particular type of air support or whatever was up there . Richard just whatever was available. Ordinarily, nothing bigger than a 250 pound bomb. That is uncomfortable. The strafing. Sometimes rockets. Sort of a neat thing. We have a place down on the beach in eastern North Carolina. There is a little golf course there that i got to know and play there some in the wintertime. We got to two telling lies and war story sunday. I knew that he was in the navy. We started telling tales and identified three different times when i was stomping through the jungle and he was helping out in his a6. Reporter that is pretty neat. Richard it is. Fantastic. It really is. Reporter so you call him in and they would come in and help you out . Richard yeah. We always had a pack with us, so the pack would control the airplane. Reporter thats wonderful. Was it mostly jets or did you have helicopters coming as well . Reporter i had helicopters some, what i really liked was the big old a1e. That thing would come in real slow and real accurate. And if it got hit a couple of times, it didnt care. [laughter] reporter did you ever have the opportunity to jump with the vietnamese . Richard yes i did. Reporter how is that . How was that . Richard that was excellent. It was, i got in the country and a week later we had our little combat jump. It was unopposed, which was good. Very, very high trees on the lz. A couple of vietnamese got caught in the trees. They slid down as far as they could and then turned loose. They broke a leg or broke a back. They were way up there. Reporter it is high, tall trees. Any other operations while you were working with of battalion that stand out to you . We used to go to do go a lot. It was a special forces camp. We always ran into stuff there. When night, we always had a vietnamese doctor with us. He went to my boss and said that we have the medevac. We have to do it tonight. I had malaria. I did not realize how bad it was. A helicopter came in in the middle of the night, took me out and took me to the hospital there in saigon. A half. Was 104 and they immediately stripped me off and put me in a bath full of ice water. This is real icewater because a bunch of ice cubes are floating around in it. In a little while, and a nurse came in and said the fever was broke. Lets get you out, dried off, and put to bed. I said ok, good. I got up and looked down at myself and you are going to have to edit this, there was nothing there. I said, my lord, you have turned me into a woman. [laughter] she said, dont worry, it will come back when you warm up. [laughter] things like that you remember. Reporter sure. So, you broke your fever. Richard yes. Reporter did you get back to the vietnamese . When did you switch to a different unit . Richard i was in the hospital about four or five days. A couple of captains there one was shot, who had written a book. I think he was class of 1961 or Something Like that. Anyway, he and another guy brought me a bottle of rose. They did not bring the bottle opener. So there we are at the deck at the hospital. You cant pull a cork out, maybe can push it in. We found a jack handle and started pushing the bottle exploded. Wine and broken glass and a female nurse comes around the corner. What the hell is going on here . Those two captains just disappeared. She said, lieutenant, you get back to your bed and i will decide if you need an icewater enema. So i ran back to bed and started snoring a little bit. A couple minutes later i heard the door open and close. Nothing more was ever said. I was there for about a week and went back to the battalion. And stayed till the end of the year. Reporter how Many American officers were with you in the battalion . Richard let me see. In the battalion there was only two officers and and an seo and usually a sergeant first class. Reporter and did you have an interpreter . Did you speak french with the vietnamese . Did they speak enough english . Richard i could speak a little bit of vietnamese. We had a course before going over. I could speak a little bit. Some of the officers could speak good english. The one i told you about who went to the advanced course spoke excellent english. I could speak no french. My boss could speak no french and our Battalion Commander spoke good french because he was with the french before North Vietnam fell. He refused to speak english, so i am not sure how they communicated. Reporter ok. You mentioned the 86th pilot. Tell me one of the times that he was the one who came to your aid. R